HEART THREAD Parts Seventy-Three and Seventy-Four

73.

Stay out of sunshine walk in the
shade

I suppose this place an ancient apple
tree

older than Eden and ferns grow round
it

it leaves me with no answers

I feel glum and businesslike today

accountant of a bankrupt hardware
store

with nothing left but the names of
instruments

columns of numbers those birds of the
heavens

endlessly fluttering past and
vanishing

and O the hawk of zero knows my name

inscribable outstretched beneath him

divide by zero and smile for the
police.

74.

Some day I’ll get this someday wrong

and it will be today, the actual

two schoolchildren performing for
assembly

tell of seaweed stars in our flag

what about the starship from the
alien planet

why would they bother to come here

why do women wear flowers in their
hair

I never wanted to alter your routine

snow or swelter you know better

there are whole cities where the men
know less

spell your name the Irish way

then no one can whisper it in local
dark.

ROBERT
KELLY